Content warning: This post discusses enslavement, sexual assault, and racism.

Every July 4 the United States celebrates its annual national day. On July 4, 1776, the Thirteen Colonies of the United States formally declared their independence from Great Britain. These famous words by Thomas Jefferson (borrowing heavily from the 1581 Dutch Declaration of Independence, the Act of Abjuration) have inspired millions: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”1

As eloquent and aspirational as these words are, the Declaration did not extend these rights to all: It specifies men (which, as time went on, was NOT understood to be gender-neutral), and excluded enslaved people of African origin and the indigenous nations of North America/Turtle Island. Further down in the document, it makes this claim:

“He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”1

This “grievance” refers to two things – one, Lord Dunmore proclaiming that any enslaved people who liberated themselves and joined him in fighting against the colonist rebellion would be legally free, and two, the various indigenous nations allied with Britain against the colonies. Thus, “all men” referred to the white colonists in rebellion, not all men, everywhere.

That this hypocrisy regarding freedom exists in the Declaration is no surprise given the man who penned the words. The same man who penned those words of freedom in 1776 penned these words below in 1820 regarding Black women he had enslaved:

“I consider a woman who brings a child every two years as more profitable than the best man of the farm. what she produces is an addition to the capital, while his labors disappear in mere consumption.”2

As explained by the author and teacher Jasmine L. Holmes, what Jefferson is describing is that rape of Black women to forcibly impregnate them and sell off the children they gave birth to was more lucrative for enslavers than even the forced labor of the strongest enslaved man on a farm. Jefferson enriched himself through the enslavement and rape of Black people. The enslaved girl Sally Hemings was forcibly impregnated by Jefferson himself by the time she was 16 and was kept in a room to which the only entrance and exist was Jefferson’s bedroom.3

Jefferson’s legacy is one of freedom, but also one of racist enslavement, rape, and genocide. Thus, when Jefferson is remembered for the words he wrote that declared the independence of a nation and freedom for a people, we should ask ourselves, “freedom for WHICH people? Independence for WHOM?”

Sources:

  1. “V. The Declaration of Independence as Adopted by Congress, 11 June–4 July 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-01-02-0176-0006. [Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 1, 1760–1776, ed. Julian P. Boyd. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950, pp. 429–433.]
  2. “Thomas Jefferson to John Wayles Eppes, 30 June 1820,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-16-02-0052. [Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, vol. 16, 1 June 1820 to 28 February 1821, ed. J. Jefferson Looney et al. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019, pp. 64–68.]
  3. “The Life of Sally Hemings“, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, https://www.monticello.org/sallyhemings/. Accessed July 4, 2023; Cottman, Michael. “Historians Uncover Slave Quarters of Sally Hemings at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello”, NBC News, www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/thomas-jefferson-sally-hemings-living-quarters-found-n771261. July 3, 2017.